


Tenure

by sunshinestealer



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:12:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7541107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years have passed since that fateful night, and now Wirt is a professor of American Folklore and Mythology at a private university. Life's pretty normal for the most part, and he doesn't even think about seeking out the unknown or the paranormal.</p><p>That is, until he gets a new Master's candidate in the form of Dipper Pines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tenure

Fifteen years had passed since that horrible night in 1988.

College (and post-grad studies) had come and gone, and Wirt still had vivid nightmares of that fateful gambit he very nearly made with the embodiment of despair. The monster that wanderers had come across in the woods. When their paths were no longer familiar and they had taken too many wrong turns to re-orient themselves, the branches of the trees forming a cage overhead.

When he had woken up in the hospital, it had taken a weekend to recover. The clipboard at the foot of his bed said he was there for ‘dehydration, shock and exhaustion’. He couldn’t help but shake his head at that — even then, he knew his life would be forever altered.

Greg had bounced back from the incident with little issue. He would sit and play in the kids’ corner while Wirt attended family therapy with his mother and step-dad, which also allowed him to work out the lingering issues from his (no, _their_ ) near-death experience. Wirt still had moments of nausea and severe anxiety, but all things considered, he thought life could have been a lot worse.

He had dated Sara during high school, and even though he was still looked upon as the weedy, awkward, scholarly sort by his more macho peers, everybody seemed to agree that he and Sara made a good match. She graduated as valedictorian of their graduating class, and Wirt made decent enough grades for college.

Well, not just decent - he was always humble about his achievements - but his admissions counsellor had written an excellent letter of recommendation to the nearest private university, one that Wirt considered he would have no hope of hell in getting into. (Coincidentally, it would be the same one that Sara was attending in the fall.)

They continued dating into college, where Wirt discovered his area of research interests: American myth and folklore. Thankfully, the university had an excellent humanities and liberal arts department. Sara was studying Architecture, having always had talents in mathematics and art. Wirt had seen her sketches of the spooky old churches and buildings to which she seemed constantly drawn.There was a grown over church in the woods just out of town, even some old farming shacks from America’s colonial days, now reclaimed by nature. Sympathetically, she went to these places by herself, knowing how ill at ease her boyfriend felt in these woods.

Wirt’s early papers had focused upon the creatures that went bump in the night, according to the legends of various First Nations groups. He’d felt a little sick whilst writing it, but knew he’d have to get over his lingering fear of the Beast sooner or later. He stared straight into the artist’s depiction of the Wendigo in his academic text, with its glowing eyes and gnarled antlers, and had to remind himself that it was only a still image. It couldn’t leap off of the page and devour his soul. He breathed in, using the exercises he’d learned in therapy.

College was somewhat of a breeze for Wirt. He had always been able to hyper-focus his concentration into a single task, and could have first drafts of papers done within a day or two of it being assigned. He went through the motions during each semester, sticking to a rigid routine. If he fell off the path, he’d noted over the years how his anxiety would start playing up to the point where the vicious circle of thinking he’d fail his studies forever and never be good enough for Sara would emotionally cripple him for weeks. He couldn’t afford for that to happen, not when he had such high prospects! He had one professor, who rather stereotypically dressed in tweed, drunk tea from a thermos and had grown a bushy moustache. And that professor had assured Wirt that he was good enough for a Master’s.

So, he’d applied for funding, not ever expecting to get anything out of it, and much to his surprise, the letter came confirming his next few years of study. He even had a spot as a T.A. with his supervisor’s undergrad class.

The Master’s came and went. Wirt waved to Greg sitting in the graduation audience. His little brother was now just starting high school — when the hell did that happen!? 

Sara had gotten the both of them a house in a town closer to the college, and Wirt moved out of his childhood home with somewhat of a heavy heart. Time seemed to fly by again, as he claimed his PhD from the dean of the college and joked to Sara that their combined student debt could probably pay for the world’s most amazing wedding. Which somehow led to an informal (and absolutely _perfect_ , in Sara’s eyes) marriage proposal.

They were married by Sara’s father later that fall, and Wirt started work as a professor at his alma mater. During his time, his PhD supervisor had passed away — and he was left as the sole port of call to an entire legion of students who’d taken up the class as part of their module choices. It was hard work, and definitely took some adjustment, but he was able to have a large percentage of passes on the course. Maybe his finals were too easy? Or maybe it was an interesting course, filled with mysteries on the human spirit and the shared penchant for storytelling that transcended national borders.

As with every new school year, he was interested to meet his new Master’s supervisees, the majority of whom usually came straight from the undergraduate’s course. Except for one, who had relocated from a university in California to study here, and at very short notice too. Wirt was curious, aware that this university was certainly prestigious, but also located in the middle of nowhere and there _had_ to be better job and research prospects in California, surely?

The student’s name was Dipper, according to the dossier he had been handed by Administration for this late admission. His statement for college had given Wirt some pause. Somehow his admissions counsellor hadn’t told him to keep the spooky, supernatural occurrences to a minimum in his personal statement to the college. Especially a private one like this, with a reputation for academic snobbery. Such as his regular work for a radio station specialising in ghostly voice recordings. Or the gap year he had taken with ‘renowned explorer and paranormal expert Stanford Pines.’ One paragraph even began: “When I was 12, I saw my first demon in the woods in Oregon…”

He half suspected that the entire reason behind this student being placed into the Folklore and Myth pathway was because the college didn’t entirely know what to do with him. To be fair, the rest of the faculty didn’t _quite_ know what to make of the shy professor who dressed like a man twice his age and occasionally taught classes in poetry (especially the poetry of Goethe and Rilke), and the Gothic aesthetic to groups of English Lit. students.

Wirt sipped his tea from his flask (a habit he’d picked up from his mentor), and wondered if this really was all bunk. This was the American Myth and Folklore department, why on earth was somebody with an interest in parapsychology - a science, as discredited as it was - going into a liberal arts programme?

He put the folder to one side for now. He had a stack of papers to grade, even just one month into the new semester. He’d become a harsh yet fair taskmaster, believing that regular essay writing on aspects of their particular research subject was the best way to keep them on course for the best masters or doctorate theses. This approach had worked splendidly for the past few years.

Of course, this Dipper Pines would have to make up the credit elsewhere, having missed the first month and the first graded essay. He’d have to arrange a meeting with the boy, so he quickly fired up his computer, only to find that he already _had_ an e-mail from an outside account. The computer techs were clearly still trying to get Dipper on the e-mail system at the university.

Wirt looked at his calendar on his desk quickly and rattled off a few dates for appointments, then sent an e-mail.

Five minutes later, he received a reply: _Can’t do tomorrow, sorry! I’m camping in the woods right now._

He clenched his teeth. Camping? In the middle of the week?

_I’m sure you and I will have a lot to discuss,_ Wirt typed back.

_Sorry, I’ll be in on Friday! Just testing out a parapsychological hypothesis_.

The boy clearly _was_ on the wrong course.

Wirt couldn’t help but be curious. _What hypothesis are you testing?_

_Ghostly activity in the Tanner’s House_.

He cringed inwardly. What was with this guy? The Tanner’s House? That was only a few miles off of campus, down an unmapped dirt road into dead and dry scrubland where a disused cabin stood. Local kids would often dare each other to sleep there on Halloween night, fascinated by the grisly murder that had supposedly taken place in 1866. Wirt sometimes brought it up in his classes, as a folkloric belief and local custom that had no basis in academic reality. There was no recorded evidence of anybody named Tanner ever living there, to say nothing of the murders that had involved flaying the skin off of still-living victims to use as leather. But ignorance had always trumped fact around these parts. 

Friday. It would be Friday. At two o’clock. No other offers. He made sure to reflect that in the tone of his e-mail, and got an almost instant reply.

_Sure! See you then._

He sighed and leaned back in his leather recliner, getting his cell phone out of his pocket to talk to Sara. She was probably out drafting building plans with the property company who’d been extremely keen to hire her the moment she’d finished her Master’s. But he got an instantaneous reply.

“Hey, Werther.”

“My name is _Wirt_ ,” he said, fully aware of how funny Sara thought his real name was, along with his penchant for Goethe. “You doing okay, honey?”

Sara chuckled down the phone. “Yeah, fine. We’re just out for lunch with the client. We have to go to this place in Indianapolis some time, it’s amazing.”

“But can we afford it?”

“That’s the million dollar question… Werther.”

He groaned.

“Anyway. What time are you going to be in for dinner tonight? I don’t know about you, but that box set of _Twin Peaks_ is calling my name.”

“We’ve watched it three times already,” Wirt said, cheeks growing a little pink. He wanted to slap his teenage self senseless for being so afraid to talk to her when it turned out they shared so much in common. Both even thought that Jason Funderberker (the person, not the frog) was a bit of a wet rag. “…7pm, okay?”

“Okay, then. Lots of papers to grade?”

“Lots and lots.”

“I love you lots and lots too. Bye bye. See you at 7!”

The phone went dead, and Wirt threw himself back into grading, with one final read of Dipper’s student profile. Before even meeting this kid, Wirt could sense that he was going to be a lot of hard work…


End file.
